SPECIAL REPORT SOUL MUSIC
Without music, life would be a mistake.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
If I were to tell you that music is good for you, you’d probably regard that as an assertion so self-evident as to be beyond discussion. Who hasn’t felt the joy and solace of music let alone seen the uninhibited way children react to it, singing and dancing, as the saying goes, as if no one’s watching? Scientists have even observed unborn infants responding in a similar fashion.
My granddaughter was exposed to music in utero — in particular, a Dean Martin CD that was then in high rotation at our place. In her early years, we never had any problem getting her to sleep as Dino would do the job for us. (The one exception, for some reason, was Volare; we had to skip over that track because it made her cry.)
Some years ago there was a photo shoot at this publishing company involving a large group of babies and toddlers. The photographer was having a lot of trouble wrangling the wriggling infants until someone had the idea to go searching for some music. Bach was a bit helpful but the one CD that soothed the babies was an album by western swing band, Asleep at the Wheel.
It turns out English conductor John Lubbock, whose acclaimed Orchestra of St John’s has performed concerts for more than 35,000 autistic children over the past decade, has also discovered the calming, joyful effect of 2/4 time, the prevailing metre of country music and traditional songs in general.
As well as running his Music for Autism charity, Lubbock organises concerts for dementia patients and even started a choir at Huntercombe Prison in Oxfordshire. As he told the London Telegraph, “These guys have plenty of time — and energy. And singing is the most wonderful therapy.”
PREACHING TO THE CHOIR
“If I cannot fly, let me sing.” ~ Stephen Sondheim
In the beginning was the voice, the musical instrument available to us all. Writes composer Andrew Ford, host of Radio National’s The Music Show, “Singing is the start of music, its most common manifestation and, arguably, its most sublime expression. By singing, we make ourselves physically part of music and music part of us.”
Song almost certainly predates speech and still moves us in a primal way: ask anyone who has discovered the joys of singing in a choir. For Mary Bruce, a frenetically busy civil celebrant on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, choir practice nights are simply her “sanity”.
Research confirms it really is good for you. By monitoring the vital signs of the members of a choir, Björn Vickhoffat Sweden’s University of Gothenburg discovered the singers’ heart rates soon became synchronised. This is related to an effect known as respiratory sinus arrhythmia, where the heartbeat varies in synchrony with breathing. Research on meditation has established this has soothing effects similar to those that come from breathing exercises in yoga.
Singing also releases endorphins, dopamine and serotonin, hormones associated with feelings of pleasure, as well as oxytocin, a chemical that manages stress and enhances trust and bonding, thus countering depression and loneliness. Ohio State music professor David Huron suggests singing may generate prolactin, a consoling hormone present in nursing women (as
